Users were affected in exactly the same way. And every user - i.e. poster - was first just a visitor. Much fewer would have become posters if they'd been greeted by a login wall that wanted an e-mail and phone-number.
When one of those features is being able to see the most recent tweets from an account, that's asinine.
In other words: If you link to a profile page, X doesn't properly show you. It gives you a random selection of popular tweets that person has made, often several years old.